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Transcription: [00:15:56]
{SPEAKER name="José Andrés"}
I mean - you have to be really bold - and think in a way that not every mind is able to think - and see what we are not able to see.

[00:16:08]
To put almost all your career on the line - to say I am going to open this kind of 'edible farm' in the middle of the Mall - because through my farm and through sharing food in a table, I'm going to be able to send a message I really want to send.

[00:16:27]
But this is 'Alice the Activist' we know, for the last how many years—

[00:16:31]
but I think that to understand the activist and the chef you've become, and the influencer you've become—

[00:16:37]
to a degree we almost have to go - obviously back - to - you look beautiful from very young, to me - you will always be young - but the younger years - of the 'Alice the Beginner', when—

[00:16:52]
something happen in her that make her say, 'wow, food can be, what can unite people and can be what change who we are'.

[00:17:06]
So, you study in Berkeley - and you move to France during your times that you were studying.

[00:17:13]
And was a little market - down in the street where you live - that somehow had the profound influence in how you understood what it meant 'food' - and buying food, and be close to the farmers and the fresh - and fruits—

[00:17:30]
how that experience as a youngster in Paris, in France, began influencing the Alice that you are today?

[00:17:40]
{SPEAKER name="Alice Waters"}
Well, you know I think I have to really, um, you know in a way go back to my childhood in New Jersey - and I - because it's those experiences you have when you're really little - and I'm sure you had them in Spain—

[00:17:59]
where you're, uh, you know, living very close to nature - and I grew up in - right then in the mid-40s and my parents had a Victory Garden - and they didn't have very much money—

[00:18:18]
and so, we kind of, uh, you know, even though my mother wasn't a good cook - in fact, she was a very bad cook—

[00:18:26]
they did things like - make applesauce from the apples on the tree, and they—

[00:18:34]
I remember eating strawberries out in the garden - and they cooked rhubarb, and—

[00:18:41]
I learned the name of all the flowers, and—

[00:18:45]
I, I, my mother used to take us for drives out to see the Dogwood trees in the fall, and, and, what was happening - I mean, in the spring—

[00:18:57]
and how the leaves were changing in the fall - and it was a very, um, I don't know - as I kid, I ran wild out in the woods,

[00:19:06]
I mean you probably did too—

{SPEAKER name="José Andrés"}
I did.

It's good that—

{SPEAKER name="Alice Waters"}
He definitely ran wild.

[00:19:14]
{SPEAKER name="José Andrés"}
It's great I don't make my life as an interviewer or reporter--- because as you see, she answer, uh, whatever she wanted. Uh—

{SPEAKER name="Alice Waters"}
—I'll get to Paris—

{SPEAKER name="José Andrés"}
—she went back many years before.

[00:19:26]
So, what you're saying here that - really your childhood growing up - with the Victory Garden - sharing those meals at home—

[00:19:34]
I don't know you, but me, very quickly, we will not go to restaurants—

{SPEAKER name="Alice Waters"}
—yeah, we never went to restaurants—

{SPEAKER name="José Andrés"}
—because we did not have the money to go - so eating at home was a true necessity—

[00:19:43]
but it was a necessity that was highly enjoyable - and is one of the things probably I miss the most today. Is it the same experience you are sharing?

[00:19:52]
{SPEAKER name="Alice Waters"}
Well, it was that - I mean we all had to come to the dinner table - but you think about the population in this country where maybe as many as 85% don't have
dinner with their family anymore.

[00:20:06]
So, just image that - that they're, they're kind of eating on the run - or they're eating out there and digesting 'Fast Food Nation' values - they're out someplace else. And so—

[00:20:20]
I'm just talking about my childhood - because I'm thinking about kids coming - when they're very young - into this kind of environment that happens in school—

[00:20:38]
that they can come to - to smell and taste and be engaged in this way - just naturally - if they were to be involved with the production of food and the serving of food to each other—

[00:20:56]
and as part of an everyday experience, it would bring in a whole different set of values - that I think would be an incredible influence on their lives.

[00:21:10]
I think it opens you up - when your senses are stimulated in that way - you know those are our pathways, as Montessori says, into your mind.

[00:21:24]
And we need to touch - and we need to taste - and smell and see and hear - really finely - in order to really be engaged with the world around us. So, that's what it's about—

[00:21:42]
and I think people who - before this period of time, of industrial food - that all of us around the world - whether we are brought up in Spain or in the United States - which is hard to believe - that in my lifetime—

Transcription Notes:
--> I transcribed the language errors, as spoken - as this is how Mr Andrés speaks as a non-native speaker